Attended a Vince Morris Seminar on Saturday

Vince Morris is often mentioned as one of the people responsible for reviving kata, along with Iain and Patrick McCarthy, so when I saw that he was going to be teaching a seminar about 30 minutes away from me I decided I had to attend. My first impression of him is that he is a friendly but rather rowdy person with a bit of a strict streak (which probably comes from teaching military, police and government organizations?) and he has a very direct and practical outlook on karate. The seminar was supposed to go from 1pm to 3pm, but instead went from about 1:15pm to 4pm, and we covered quite a lot of ground, I feel--I did a full write-up here, if anyone is interested.

Has anyone else attended Mr. Morris' seminars, or watched his DVD's, and what did you think of his applications? Overall, I did like a lot of what he taught, and much of it was similar to things I have seen and done before so it shouldn't be difficult to work into my training. There were a couple things I wasn't thrilled with, and a few historical things he said were a little off (primarily, he mentioned Okinawan bodyguards carrying daisho, which I don't believe was the case, and said "No one in the world was teaching this stuff 25 years ago when I started doing it," which doesn't seem right to me, either) but otherwise I was quite happy with the seminar.

I met Mr. Morris in 1996 when my sensei, Mr. Phillip Koeppel, invited him to be the featured seminar presenter at our organization's national tournament. At that time I had fifteen years of training and a hundred-fifty or so tournaments under my belt. Even so, as a literacy instructor in a federal correctional institution and as an officer in the Army Reserve, I often wondered what among my sport karate skill sets would serve me in those settings, or even if attacked on the street for that matter. Vince Morris opened my eyes to how real and effective our art can be. Personally I liked his gruff demeanor as it matched that of most of my teachers, but the content he offered was so much more practical in the context of real self-defense. He spent nearly forty minutes discussing weapons disarming techniques with me in the hallway after the seminar. Somehow we got onto the subject of developing a good jab. He dared me to hit him with my jab which I had always considered to be very good. He positioned his open hands in front of his chest and proceded to swat away every one I threw. Then he invited me to try it. He touched my chin or the tip of my nose seven consecutive times while I flailed my hands a half-second too late. He told me he could tell when I was going to punch by the involuntary constriction of my pupils immediately prior to execution. He explained that he had spent countless hours in front of a mirror and with practice partners training that twitch out of his nervous system. I was quite impressed with his knowledge, ability, and willingness to share. Needless to say that night changed my perspective on karate and may well be the reason I'm still training and teaching today. I since have become a big fan and now own nearly all his books and videos. I had not met anyone with his depth of understanding of the brutally effective applications within karate kata until this Iain Abernethy fellow came along.